Threatening graffiti sprayed outside Army Radio office: ‘Your days are numbered’

Threatening graffiti was found Monday morning sprayed outside the offices of Army Radio in Jaffa, as the government works to shut down the long-running institution.

The graffiti said, “Your time is running out, your days are numbered,” alongside another sentence reading, “The head of the snake, the Supreme Court, the Department for Internal Police Investigations, prosecutors. Secular heresy. Must be removed.”

The style of the graffiti mimicked the lettering found in many religious texts.

The cabinet last month unanimously approved Defense Minister Israel Katz’s controversial proposal to shut down Army Radio, after years of similar efforts to do so. A week later, the High Court issued an injunction freezing the move, which angered a number of government ministers.

The IDF on Monday condemned the graffiti, calling it a “serious and unacceptable act of incitement” against military personnel.

In a statement, the military said that the vandalism must be “unequivocally condemned” and urged law enforcement to bring those responsible to justice.

שוב כתובות נאצה ליד כלי תקשורת : הפעם גלי צה״ל. כנראה על ידי אותו חשוד שצייר גרפיטי ליד רשת 13. ״זמנכם קצוב, ימיכם ספורים״ pic.twitter.com/iENainxjmH

— Yossi Eli (@Yossi_eli) January 5, 2026

Media outlets in Israel have often been targets for right-wing activists. In November, threatening graffiti was found spray-painted outside the offices of the Channel 13 news network in Tel Aviv.

Katz’s proposal to shutter Army Radio would see the storied station air its last broadcast on February 28, 2026. He argued in the cabinet meeting last month that a radio station “operated by the military is an anomaly that does not exist in democratic countries.”

The defense minister also argued that Army Radio’s political and current affairs programming “creates a fundamental difficulty for the IDF, stemming from the IDF’s involuntary involvement in political discourse,” and said the station’s content “harms the Israel Defense Forces, its soldiers and its unity.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, saying last month that “a military station broadcasting under the authority of the army… exists in North Korea and maybe a few other countries, and we certainly do not want to be counted among them.”

Attorney General Gali Baharav Miara, however, issued an opinion against the cabinet decision, arguing that there were procedural and substantive flaws in the government’s decision-making process to close the station.

The High Court, favoring the attorney general’s position, froze the station’s closure in a late-December interim ruling until the court reaches a final ruling on petitions against the move.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich lambasted the high court’s ruling in an interview on Army Radio last week against Supreme Court President Isaac Amit.

“We’re speaking on Army Radio, a station that all the [military] chiefs of staff thought should be shut down. The government decided to close it, and now there is an interim injunction,” Smotrich said. “This is not democracy.”

Stav Levaton contributed to this report.